Dead Air
by Juanita Dark
Summary: Angelus follows his muse. [Angelus]


There was nothing like harsh, frigid air to remind you how dead you were. Sometimes he missed that.   
  
Catch the snow at the right depth and it was almost impossible for humans to achieve any kind of practical mobility; the vexation of their abortive attempts at escape pronouncing their fear, heating their blood, lending the taste an intense quality it otherwise lacked. Darla, of course, had little tolerance for the snow wetting her hem, but he, he used to have fun with it.   
  
Biting; sipping just enough to cause disorientation, then letting the dazed quarry go; watching the great clouds of crystalline air they produced with hot, panicked breaths that he didn't need to take himself but enjoyed seeing. In fact, it was difficult not to find the inevitable running, tripping crawl into deeper drifts some enlightened form of entertainment that should have occurred to him earlier but held no less compulsion for it. He rarely did it for the blood - despite the richness of the flavour - and it was often wasted, leaving a dark, spattered trail that he truly didn't care for.   
  
It appealed to him to effectively disappear from view so that the game thought it was alone, before withering his human mask and appearing out of nowhere. They always thought they could get away. Sometimes they screamed; he liked that. But better when they froze with fear. Infrequently they turned to fight, but he always arrested that revolting development by snapping their necks before becoming engaged in pointless tussle. If he did it right, they quivered while he held them, the piquancy of the fear tangible enough to be tasted, and it stirred him - to say the least.  
  
It was when he and Penn got on like this that Darla wore that air of scorn she never rightly outgrew. He would - in jest - attempt to take her, in the snow, and it was only then that she would evoke her seniority of line and fell him if necessary. She would take a horse to the nearest city, where he would find her later in her nicely genteel hotel-room with poorly concealed cadavers. He would bring her some token of affection rended from his hunt and she would make allowances for his still learning. But he was young then, and it took a while for things to lose their novelty.  
  
In the quaint European villages - while they lasted - there was nothing better than to find an isolated family home, some last outpost of civilisation - a cottage or a lodge - just before Christmas. Feign the accidental tourist. Win their confidence by flattery and a premeditated condition of confusion and bravado. Only after the invitation would he instigate some diversion that caused at least one of them to follow him back outside.  
  
He had done it more than once.   
  
First, lured Papa out and bitten down hard enough to cause spontaneous urination, and not let go - no matter how disgusting it became - until he had his fill. He needed the heat you see, for later exertions.   
  
He would lay the father in the snow in the shape of a cross, out in the nearest open field. Go back to the house and say there had been an accident. Bring the wife out and do the same to her. Sometimes he ripped their skirts to make them run further and if the woman was attractive, he usually took his time. Then down she would go, to the side of her husband - faux crucified. The offspring would be last. Very often he broke their tiny necks before letting them over the threshold. He needed this blood, you see, for decoration. So that even after the bodies were removed, three, four or more bloody crosses were visible underneath.  
  
Later, dispensing with the crosses altogether, he started shaping the families in mock nativities. Madly drunk on the vodka-blood of a Russian captain once, it had suited him to kill livestock to realise his little masterpiece. Penn, for some reason, liked to pack the children inside little snowmen, always leaving the fingers and eyes visible.  
  
Juvenile it was, and naturally this interest in snow could only last for so long before the masses caught on and he became impatient - either massacring everyone inside or simply gorging himself with detachment, dumping the bodies out on the snow in a heap. Which of course lacked elegance. So inspired for the last time he had strewn the bodies of his final family over the roof, packed them over with snow and left the front door open. Someone would find them, hopefully in Spring when everything started to thaw. And rot.  
  
* * *  
  
But he was in Sunnydale - and true to its legend it was sunny. The air was warm, with rarely a fog or downcast day. Occasionally, clear night skies made the air arctic and cast the moon adrift, a lone glacial presence in a sea of shards and nothing. It was then that he felt the old thrill of arrangement again.   
  
Tonight was such a night.   
  
Rightfully, at this time, Acathla was being installed at the mansion, watched over by a petulant Spike and a rapt Dru. Yet he stayed to the shadows hoping to catch a glimpse of his intended dusting some fool with fangs - another pleasurable spectator sport. On this night he found two - fools and fighters both - four in all, not counting the piles of dust littering the frosted grass around their melee.   
  
The Jamaican used a crooked stake and a straighter method, lacked for puns but not for directness - the type who clearly accepted early death, as a function of her responsibility because her Watcher had made sure her life was a drag. Dru, perhaps, might like that - easy to mesmerise. He, however, found it an unfortunate waste of time, training and temperament - almost giving him a reason to kill those responsible for it, as well as her. But he was a lover not a fighter, and Spike - once he renounced the wheelie set - would like that kind of fight just fine. Make her angry first; prime her for a slow, and hard suck. It was probably why Spike gravitated towards Buffy - she was easier to inflame and almost worth the effort once she was in that state. It amused him to consider that had it been Spike, and not himself, at the right hand of the Judge while Buffy sighted up the rocket launcher, the younger would have worn fangs and a hard-on. Both ineffective for a long-range weapon. But that was Spike, effectively ineffective.  
  
For now, he left the Slayers and went the other way, to find a pair at least superficially like them.   
  
It took a while to sift the opportunities from the accidents, amongst the alleyways and cold, glittering sidewalks, but opportunity did arise. He found the blonde outside a club, clearly high and open to suggestion. She giggled when he wrapped his arm around her, her dancing partner didn't mind - clearly this was the order of the game.  
  
"You're cute," she giggled again, the scent of her mint breath seeming cold - tantalising him with memories of the snow.   
  
When he had her alone, his strength deceptively concealed by his dark coat and his eyes a fathomless empty, he forced an easy smile. She sniffed, rubbing a hand across her cheek to squint at him - looking curiously waifish, as she tried to catch a glimpse of his face out of the shadow.   
  
"You are cute," she repeated, something like meaning slipping into the words for the first time.  
  
The light wind shifted stray, blonde hairs across her face and he brought a hand up to pluck them away. He pushed her gently back against a wall, moving in closer as he quietly cooed: "Aren't I just a handsome devil?"   
  
The fangs and forms were calculatingly produced.   
  
This one didn't have the sense or presence of mind to recognise what was upon her. She took stock of his face by tracing her blue-tinted fingers along the bumps of his newly predatory countenance perhaps, fighting for the clarity of what was right in front of her. Very slowly, her own face contorted with what could have been realisation but was probably very well disguised as a really bad trip. She burst into tears.  
  
He bit her savagely because it seemed the time and place, hoping pain might produce something exquisite in her. But no. She only ceased her crying like a baby being soothed. Her heart fluttering rapidly against the birdcage of her chest, she breathed deeply even as he drank callously. So he made it harder for her, pressing down on her throat so that she nearly choked. Yet her need was almost as ferocious as his disdain, the harder he drained her the more she felt the need to cling to him. Clutching at the folds of his coat with an inconceivable greed to hold and be held.   
  
She was an overwhelming disappointment, if an effective meal. Gripping him even tighter in death. He shrugged her from him. Leaving her carcass in the shadow of a crypt, he went off to seek the other.  
  
The brown girl was harder to find, but when he did find her she proved more than an advancement. A tuba-player, resigned to late practise imprudently believing that the locked doors, high windows and skitterish staff - her instructor a solemn and mechanical, blackbird of a woman who, quite likely, never knew exactly what broke her neck - precluded her from early death. Her fingers arched nimbly over the keys as she moulded the puffed notes into a pleasant recitation of Camille Saint-Saën's Danse Macabre. He chose not to interrupt until she forced an error on herself - the last note was off key. He applauded nonetheless. She started.  
  
"Can I help you? Ms. Kaiser will be back in a moment, if you--"  
He stood up from the vantage point of his seat.   
"Ms. Kaiser is unfortunately detained at the moment," he paused liking that first inscrutable flush of suspicion on her face. "She's unfortunately dead."  
There was a flicker of understanding but the etiquette in her made her feign misunderstanding.  
"I'm sorry? I thought you said--"  
"I killed her."  
He smiled, and in case she misunderstood that, his bestial nature was to the fore.  
  
The girl was on her feet quicker than he would have credited, her sharp movement disturbing the flimsy music-stand before her - it went crashing to the floor with a tinny little clatter. He took a taunting step towards her.  
  
"You're next."  
The whizzing tuba just missed his head as he ducked to avoid it. He steadied himself.  
"Now I have to say, I'm impressed!"   
He leapt out at her, catching her in mid-flight to the door.   
"Not too impressed though, just - you know - hungry."  
She struggled, all fists and nails - he was pleased by her efforts but forced her hands behind her back. Her mouth opened to scream and wap!! his hand went over it. Her eyes widened.  
  
"Hmm, it seems you missed your true vocation in life. With a throw like that I would have suggested something athletic, softball perhaps? Might have been a star-player. College, sponsorship, fame, early retirement." He drew back a little so he could see her considering. His hand tightened around her wrists and he felt, rather than heard a squeal form in her throat. "Hmmm? It's a pity, isn't it?"  
  
It was then she drew back a foot and aimed it squarely at his shin. The pluckiness rather than the pain stunned him for a moment and he let her go. She, naturally, screamed bloody murder but never made it to the door. He caught her by her hair, throwing her forward so that she bounced against a wall, then he wrenched her backwards, towards him. The skin above her right eye had split and now bled freely. His lips found her throat and he ran his tongue along the artery to alarm her before he bit down. She inhaled in shock and a fair amount of indignation. The fear and anger in her swirled in a hot, heady bouquet that he fully appreciated.   
  
She slid floorward, dying, but he hoisted her body towards him lifting her. She wasn't quite dead yet and she made an admirable attempt not to cooperate with him as he took her along. By the time he approached the cemetery her head lolled oddly on the neck like a snapped branch. He found the blonde undisturbed, where he had left her and easily lifting them both - a corpse in each arm he searched for the perfect spot. He found it, licking his lips at its aptness.   
  
Setting them down he slipped their arms around each other, like sisters, like lovers, so that they leant against each other in counterbalance as if they had laid down to sleep and died that way. The overall effect was that of peace - until one noticed the ruptured throats and understood the blasphemy. He brushed their hair out of their faces for the last time. Then appraised the two sleepers lying, as they were, in the shadow of a statuette angel. Beyond them the moon glowed sending tall shadows out from the wings, extending them well beyond the girls' ankles. He adding a single red rose to their dead, entangled fingers before leaving.  
  
Technically he was still young.  
  
-fin- 


End file.
